De Atramentis Rote Rosen Review

[Pencilcaseblog]

-This review is an adapted version of the one that can be found on my personal blog (www.pencilcaseblog.com). Visit my blog for more pictures, a copy of the written review and of course many other pen, pencil, paper and ink reviews. Enjoy the review! (De Atramentis Rote Rosen review: http://www.pencilcaseblog.com/2014/06/inktastic-de-atramentis-rote-rosen.html )-

Discovering a new ink brand is always exciting, especially when the ink smells like roses!

At first, I was really excited about the perfume, it was immediately noticeable when I opened the bottle. And I must admit that it actually smells quite good, like actual roses, not some synthetic rubbish! But as soon as the ink had dried on the paper, the scent faded away, and so did my original enthousiasm fade as well...

So yeah, scents in inks, pretty gimmicky if you ask me. It doesn't make sense! What's the point of having ink that smells great from the bottle -even my pen smelled great when writing- but smells like any other ink (read: smells like nothing at all!) when it has dried? Conclusion: no, it won't make your love letters smell like roses!

Luckily Rote rosen (literally translated: red roses) has some other qualities besides smelling good. The colour is very nice, it's a pink-ish, almost magenta shade, much darker than I expected at first, but I really like it! It also has very decent shading, so overall it doesn't appear as dark as it actually is.

I was also really surprised by the performance of this ink, it is incredibly smooth! I would consider it on par with Iroshizuko inks. (So, yes that's quite good!) I expected the flow to be mediochre, as it is a red-ish ink (All other red inks I own have quite average flow), but this too was much better than expected, and I never experienced any skipping or hard starts with this ink in my TWSBI Mini!

The dry-time isn't the fastest, but knowing how beautiful it is when it has dried, I can live with that!

The price is on the higher side, at 13 Euros for a 30ml bottle, but I'll give it some credit because it looks great and is such a joy to use (And it will make your pens smell like roses!). As said, the scented properties are not really noteworthy, as you won't notice it anymore when the ink has dried. But all things considered I still think this is one of the prettiest and best performing inks I currently own!

Dries

ThePencilCaseBlog

http://www.pencilcaseblog.com

[visvamitra]

Nice one.

[amberleadavis]

I liked the ink...and I liked the scent. Though I admit scented inks are not for everyone.

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review. This is one of my favorite inks. Some of the De Atramentis scented inks are less than stellar in scent -- but this one smells like real heirloom roses. And it's a great color.

Note to people like Charles Skinner who wouldn't be caught dead using a "pink" ink: it's not bubblegum pink (more of a dark rose pink); plus, in my Parker Vac with what is probably an F nib, it comes out looking more like red violet.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Sakura FP Gallery]

I love this color.